


The Mouse Trap

by Coffin Liqueur (HP_Lovecats)



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Dead by Daylight (Video Game), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe In Which Everything Is Fine, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Or It's Pre-Canon For Both These People, Or Perhaps Both, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:15:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22533094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HP_Lovecats/pseuds/Coffin%20Liqueur
Summary: A guy looking to skip the big city to go his own way meets his girlfriend's salt-of-the-earth country family for dinner.
Relationships: Jake Park/Zoe Baker
Kudos: 3





	The Mouse Trap

They had both dreaded this, and yet they had both acknowledged it was necessary.

Zoe's Mom and Dad knew that she had a boyfriend. She had answered all questions about him with simply his first name, and that "nahw, don't worry, Daddy, Mama - he says you'll get to meet him soon. He's just a tad shy". She would have to deliver at some point.

She'd dreaded it because she knew her Mom and Dad. Daddy would, courteously enough, shake his hand, and call him "son", and address him as "Jake, isn't it? Jake who?" Jake would flinch, but not have a lie prepared to his satisfaction, and give his name in full, quietly and wearily and looking at the ground while trying not to scowl. Mama would come in, thinking it respectful to recognize vocally that he was one of "the Parks? Well, why hadn't Zoe told us that about you, yet? That she'd found such a fancy boy?" - with the utter cheer and half-conscious effusiveness of good ol' Southern hospitality meant to be flattering, truly welcoming by being subtly playful, not knowing Jake hated any insinuation that he was "fancy", or, really, at all city. Lucas would look up from where he'd be lagging back, probably tappin' on his phone as he leaned against the frame of the doorframe to the dining room with half-assed presence so Mom and Dad couldn't give him flack for not comin' in to welcome their guest, and he would smirk like he'd just heard dirt on the man. Jake would be slated to be an outsider for the rest of the night.

Jake, meanwhile, only knew so much about Zoe's family, but he had certainly gathered that they weren't the kind of family you get to avoid meeting once you're involved with one of their own. Especially when you were a young man who thought he could cozy up to their little girl. There were times he had half-wished that she'd kept him a secret because of that, and pictured a nebulous figure he understood as Zoe's Daddy stepping up to Zoe's Porch with a shotgun to give him the third degree.

He had dreaded this because he figured he was done with family. He wanted to be an outsider - under no one's microscope, and no one's responsibility but your own unless you choose to share the burden.

They had both dreaded it, and yet they had both acknowledged it was necessary, and now they evaluated how it played out in practice.

Only Zoe's pseudo-visions had come true, but it had come true - to the letter, in fact, with just one caveat. Daddy'd shaken Jake's hand, greeted him with a salty flavor of heartiness, and cajoled his full name out of him. Jake had flinched and delivered it like someone who hoped not to be recognized; Mama'd come in and laughed that Zoe'd landed such a fancy boy, and Lucas had smirked like a drowsy Cheshire cat as if he'd overheard a dark secret.

The caveat was that her bottom line had been wrong: Jake, by now, did not feel like an outsider.

This meant that Jake's projection of the night had proved to be wrong where hers was right, but right where hers was wrong. There'd been no shotgun. No third degree. He hadn't imagined her dad wearing glasses.

He was right, however, that he didn't get to be an outsider.

Curiously, however, he found in the moment that he didn't mind.

There was no pressure but a round circuit between all at the family dinner table. Mr. and Mrs. Baker asked him questions not as if interviewing but as if they had encountered an old friend in a coffee shop; they asked him how he and Zoe met, what it'd been like growing up in the city with very few assumptions. They often laughed, and soon he started laughing, too - admitted in a tentative step into the safety of it that being a Park wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Zoe's brother finally started to speak up grinning at the opportunity to agreeingly mock snobs.

He wasn't sure how to say that he envied their environment - the down-to-earthiness of the smells of wood and soft rain outside and warm colors of the lighting in the dining room and spice-scented air coming from the kitchen.

But he took it as understanding, subconsciously, when Zoe's mom hen-chuckled before cooing as she rounded back into the kitchen that "when it gets too much for you, dear, you know where you can turn to - any boy of Zoe's is family of ours". Came back and laid onto the table a big pot of earthy-red stew off of which the scent and heat of spices billowed in wild and steaming clouds.

She returned to the kitchen. Came back with four beers. The final one was passed out to him, not to her.

He looked at Zoe. Some of the sentiment behind it was Are you seeing all this? Are you hearing all this? In another part, it was to ask for her assessment. If he was safe now, or if there was any trap here he had fallen into or had yet to fall into.

Her face was more than at ease - warm, or perhaps that was amplified by that flame-yellow light, the heady spiciness of the air. She smirked like she couldn't wait for the laughter to start again; reached out and took his hand, rubbed it a little. He ever-so-faintly scoffed into tugging a small, wryly half-abashed smile, himself, tightened his fingers around hers.

Both their dread had disappeared.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the r/FanFiction February Daily Prompt challenge. February 2nd: "Spice".


End file.
